Shadow of Chinese Censors Found in Mississauga Internet

Web-filtering technology left Eastern-Canada City of Mississauga computers filtering the Internet...
Shadow of Chinese Censors Found in Mississauga Internet
Matthew Little
5/20/2009
Updated:
5/21/2009
<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/c1_medium.jpg"><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/c1_medium.jpg" alt="Long Tu sits in front of a computer screen showing a blocked website at the Mississauga Central Library. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)" title="Long Tu sits in front of a computer screen showing a blocked website at the Mississauga Central Library. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-86324"/></a>
Long Tu sits in front of a computer screen showing a blocked website at the Mississauga Central Library. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)

Web-filtering technology left City of Mississauga computers restricting the Internet in a way similar to one of the world’s most repressive regimes, one Chinese library user has discovered.

Mississauga resident Long Tu stumbled on the problem more than two months ago when he tried to visit Chinese websites that covered topics the Chinese communist regime considers sensitive, including the repression of Tibetans, controversies during the 2008 Olympics, and Falun Gong.

Mr. Tu said he understands the library needs to have some sites blocked but he was startled that websites like China21.org, which documents the repression of Christians in China, were being filtered.

“It really gave me a surprise,” he said.

 

The Great Firewall


In the 1990s, Chinese authorities enlisted the help of western companies like Cisco and Sun Microsystems to create the world’s most advanced Big Brother Internet, where search results are sanitized and Internet police, aided by filtering systems, monitor and control the content Chinese surfers can access. Chinese authorities can block websites they don’t approve of and see who is looking for them.

Human rights groups around the world have slammed the companies involved in creating China’s “Golden Shield” for turning the Internet, which was once promised to help China enter a new era of free information, into a mechanism heavily censored and monitored by the state.

Mr. Tu, who moved to Mississauga last December, is the co-author of a recently published book about the persecution of a family of Falun Gong practitioners in China who are friends of his. One of the family members, Bai Xiaojun, was tortured to death in one of China’s notorious “re-education through labour” camps.

<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/c2_medium.JPG"><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/c2_medium.JPG" alt="A screen capture taken from a Mississauga Central Library computer shows the website for China21.org blocked for hate and intolerance. " title="A screen capture taken from a Mississauga Central Library computer shows the website for China21.org blocked for hate and intolerance. " width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-86325"/></a>
A screen capture taken from a Mississauga Central Library computer shows the website for China21.org blocked for hate and intolerance.
Xiaojun’s brother was also imprisoned for three years. He made it out alive only to disappear early last year.

As Tu encountered website after website documenting the stories of China’s repressed were blocked in from a Mississauga library computer under the category of “intolerance and hate” he became deeply concerned.

“I really feel very shocked. I never thought this kind of thing could happen in Canada where there is democracy and freedom.”

Book Launch


Tu told the library manager about the problem and that manager alerted the city’s IT department. Some websites were soon unblocked but several remain inaccessible. As this newspaper went to print, websites documenting the plight of Chinese Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and Tibetans, as well as Chinese news websites that frequently publish news censored in China were still blocked at Mississauga library computers.

“The manager just tries their best to tell the IT guys to fix it,” said Tu, adding that he was told there were not enough complaints about the blockage to make fixing them a high priority.

Tu will hold an event at Mississauga Central Libray on June 10 to talk about his book and the ordeal that his family and his friends have suffered in China. His wife, Yuan Meng, the other author of the book, both practice Falun Gong. Yuan was imprisoned for 16 months in a labour camp herself and had her back broken. Now living in Toronto, the couple wrote the book to honour their imprisoned friends.

Tu said the Chinese regime’s first step in the persecution of Falun Gong in China was to block any information about it. That blockage was made possible by outlawing Falun Gong books and blocking websites that contained information about the spiritual practice.

“Our book tells true stories that are censored in China,” said Tu. “It’s disturbing to come to Canada and see this kind of censorship here, too.”

Filtering Service


Steve Praggett is head of technical support and security for the City of Mississauga. It falls on him to review websites that may be blocked incorrectly and open them up to library patrons. The same filters at the Mississauga library are applied to all other city computers.

Spraggett said he frequently receives complaints about sites that are said to be classified incorrectly by the city’s filters. He says he doesn’t have the resources to fix the problem, particularly with websites published in Chinese.

“We go to these sites and they are all in Chinese and we don’t know what the content is. If I can go to a site that I can get a translation from and I can read it and it’s all good, I'll open it.”

But Spraggett also says it was not he or other city staff who classified the sites as they are.

Mississauga gets its filtering software from SurfControl, a company known to sell its technology to repressive regimes with heavy censorship like China and Iran. In 2007, SurfControl was bought out by competitor Websense.

Amnesty International raised concerns in 2004 that Websense was contributing to human rights violations by providing its technology to the Chinese regime.

Websense sent The Epoch Times a copy of a policy stating it “does not sell to governments or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that are engaged in any sort of government-imposed censorship.” It was not clear when this policy was implemented.

Websense Promise


Sarah Thornton, a Websense spokesperson, told The Epoch Times she could not answer how SurfControl had classified the Chinese websites, offering only that the sites had been misclassified.

Websense, which offers an identical service to SurfControl, allows access to the same sites blocked by SurfControl. Instead, the Chinese sites are classified as news websites, advocacy websites, religious websites and message boards. None of the sites was listed as a hate website.

That information was not enough for Spraggett, who said he would continue to rely on SurfControl definitions for the sites, rather than update them to the classifications used by its parent company.

However, as The Epoch Times was prepared to go to print Wednesday, Websense’s Thornton called again to express the company’s regret for the mistakes in SurfControl’s database. She promised the sites would be properly categorized within 72 hours.